Living with Dog Deafness (Part 1)
Living with Dog Deafness (Part 1)
Description: Practical tactics for how to communicate with a dog who’s lost his or her hearing to ensure they remain active family members. Solutions to help your deaf dog remain a member of the family.
Tessa was very close to completely deaf by the time she was twelve. It made it quite difficult for everyone within our family unit because our family had young children during her transition to deafness. Tessa was afraid of them to begin with, but when she no longer had the warning of hearing them coming, she became even more fearful. Before we actively started putting solutions we dreamed up into place for Tess, she started nipping and biting from a place of fear and self-protection.
Dealing with Family Conflict
At first, to correct the problem, we simply separated her from the kids. They were at school most of the day, so it was only a problem at night and in the evenings. However, during the holiday breaks, we watched her grow from mostly tolerant of the kids’ antics and activities to what seemed like spiteful. She started waiting for them around corners and attacking them, much as she thought they were doing to her. She took every opportunity she could to either urinate or defecate in their bedroom. She’d make her way over to their lap blankets if she needed to vomit. Even for dogs, it’s apparent that all’s fair in love and war! The kids started becoming as afraid of her as she was of them because she would come running out of her basket at them, barking and growling, at them. We, the human adults in the family, needed to correct the situation immediately so our household could return to healthy, happy, safe, and secure for all members.
Essentially, we took a three fold set of solutions and implemented them all at once, attacking the problem from both sides at once.
- Tessa’s solutions
- Begin hand signal training. It turned into a special Sign Language just for her and our family members to communicate.
- Create a special safety zone where the kids aren’t allowed.
- Bring the two opposing sides together
- We encouraged the kids to carry treats to feed Tess whenever they were afraid of her.
- Any time Tessa got fed, the kids were the only ones to do it. This way, Tessa knew without a doubt that the kids really wanted her to be well.
- Kids’ solutions
- Create a special safety zone where Tessa wasn’t allowed. This was more difficult than we thought, as Tess had already developed the habit of trying to do her “business” in their room. We opted for putting a small gate in their doorway that would open from the top with a handle. Tess couldn’t get in, but the kids weren’t cut off from the rest of the family, either.
- Make up reminder phrases for the kids like “walking feet” and “look before you leap.” This turned into something of a game for everyone as we tried to come up with memorable phrases. In fact, it expanded to such a degree that just about everything in a dog’s life in our house now has a unique phrase associated with it – even their food!
There were, of course, still the occasional disagreements between the two sides, but they no longer were truly opposing one another and things started to settle back down to normal.
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Disclosure Statement: I am not a veterinarian; I do not diagnose medical issues, offer medical advice, prescribe drugs, or perform surgery. I am a freelance journalist writing about my experiences with my own dogs, incorporating many different complimentary tools found for my own dogs to overcome potential health concerns I have for them. I have been keeping a journal of my findings since July of 1996; I have been privileged to work with several hundred other canines and their families in a wide range of life situations as of the writing of this statement and will gladly provide references should you desire them. Your dog(s) may benefit from the care I’ve provided my own dogs, based on knowledge gained through this experience, courses taken/taught, and animal communication. My role is that of facilitator, assisting you and your dog(s) to attain or maintain a naturally healthy state. The specific results you may see, should you decide to try some of what we’ve done in our family, will be different for each animal. In addition to the articles I write and publish, I also teach massage, Usui Reiki, Quantum Touch, and Animal Communication to owners, caretakers, and practitioners; sell products for animals in these and other holistic and vibrational modalities; provide references to other animal communicators and practitioners.